Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Thursday August 05, 2010 @01:01PM
from the but-what-about-the-grid dept.

Wes found a preview of one of the most anticipated upcoming releases by the inhabitants of my office: Civ V. It starts "This preview of Civilization V is incomplete. It takes more than nine Earth hours, you see, for the great Arabian empire — land of Mecca, Rio De Janeiro and Beijing — to assume dominance of the globe."

I'm actually looking forward to some of these changes now... paying upkeep for roads makes sense to me. They're more like interstate highways now, not the roads that go every-which-way. The new way to expand your cities and develop culture sound good, too.

Well, there goes part of my 2010 and all of my 2011... just need to get a machine that can handle 3D graphics to play it, now...

I had a long hiatus from Civ II to Civ IV, and when I finally tried the latter I found it dull. The updates don't seem to add anything interesting, and haven't been any more fun than the original, or FreeCiv.

I love Civilization, but I always find that the "one true way" to play starts to bum me out and I end up not playing beyond the first couple of weeks. There's a great excitement in the discovery and exploration and surprise when you can meander through a game against real people. It's not quite the same when -- as is the case with Civilization -- the game becomes nothing but a competition to see who can speed through the spreadsheet containing the "one true path to victory" the fastest. The graphics become irrelevant and you may as well be sitting down to a multi-player spreadsheet.

I'll buy it. I'll enjoy it. I just won't enjoy it for months or years like so many of the hard core do. I wish someone would figure out the special key to keeping the excitement and exploration part of the game long into the game's cycle.

The nice thing about Civ4 and earlier was that the appearance of the land quickly and clearly conveyed information about what was there and its role in game terms. In an effort to make the landscape look more natural, I worry that this information might be more hidden. If so, that would be a bad decision.

Why do so many people insist on using the roman numerals in casual conversation? The creators use them in the official titles for media because it looks "prettier" on a box or a poster or a movie screen, but roman numerals are unarguably inferior for actual communication. There's a reason we ditched that system for general use and went with arabic numerals a long time ago.

What's especially vexing is people who abbreviate the title but still insist on using the roman numerals. FF XIII, DQ IX, Civ V. If you're _already_ trying to simplify the name then using arabic numerals will always be more clear and will often save space/characters as well. FF 13, DQ 9, Civ 5.

Making things more difficult for yourself and for everyone else reading whatever you have to say in the name of a cheap marketing gimmick is just dumb!

What kind of DRM does it come with? I just don't buy games any more because of the hardcore DRM that messes with my computer. Furthermore, constant online checks are right out too as I do not have regular internet access. Further-furthermore, any DRM that says I can only install X number of times is so much not a consideration that I will forever blacklist any publisher or game series that has ever used it (Bye bye Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto, I used to love you.).